


But Blank Lines Do Not Say Nothing

by the_rck



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Children of Immigrants, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-14 14:56:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16915020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: Julia knew a lot about her father, but she didn’t even know her mother’s maiden name.





	But Blank Lines Do Not Say Nothing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nnozomi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nnozomi/gifts).



> Thanks to Gammarad for beta reading, my write-in buddies for support, and FairestCat for letting me bounce ideas off of them. 
> 
> Title from Anne Carson's poem "The Glass Essay."

It wasn’t until after Janet came that Julia realized that she didn’t know anything at all about Millie Chant’s life before marriage. The lack crept up on Julia, and she thought, later, that it had been getting closer for a long time, that she’d have noticed the gaps eventually. 

It was just that Cat and Gwendolen’s mother had been named Chant before her marriage. Janet’s had, too, but that wasn’t a surprise because, even if Janet didn’t behave anything like Gwendolen, they were the same person in all sorts of ways that didn’t matter. Cat and Janet both knew that and a lot of other things about their parents.

Julia knew a lot about her father, but she didn’t even know her mother’s maiden name. 

She had a vague memory of someone saying that her mother had been Mr DeWitt’s ward, and Julia supposed that might explain why none of Mummy’s relatives turned up at Christmas or for birthdays or for-- well, anything at all. Daddy’s relatives-- even before Cat and Gwendolen and Janet-- had been forever turning up at any sort of excuse.

Julia wondered about that absence of family for almost a year. She added up all of the things she knew about Daddy’s life and laid them out next to the emptiness of her mother’s history. Julia paid attention to history and to what people talked about when she wasn’t supposed to be listening, so she had some ideas about silences and what hid beneath them. Most of the adults in the castle had sensitivities, sometimes guilt, sometimes sorrow, sometimes other things, and Julia knew the shape of things to step around.

Never talk to Daddy about mermaids. Never talk to Mr Roberts about spying. Never talk to Cat about drowning. Never talk to Mummy about--? 

Julia didn’t know. Not knowing ached like a pulled muscle or a bruise in an awkward place except that, instead of healing, it got worse as time passed.

Two years after Janet arrived, Julia looked at the registry in the church. She was nearly certain that her parents had been married there, right around the time Daddy had become Chrestomanci, and there it was-- Christopher Chant marrying Millie DeWitt. The name seemed wrong, but Julia thought it might simply be that she’d never heard it before.

She paged through the registry, looking at the births and deaths and weddings. She recognized some of the names, and it was sort of fascinating to know these little-- very public-- things about these people and to wonder about the sort of day the vicar had had when there were six weddings. Had they been one after another? Or several couples all at once?

Julia had read books when best friends or siblings got married simultaneously. She hadn’t really considered the logistics of it. Did they say ‘I do’ at the same moment? If they did, how did God track who was marrying who?

She was so busy wondering about that that she almost missed an entry-- _Provisional baptism: Millie DeWitt, estimated age: 17._ Julia wasn’t sure what a provisional baptism was, so she had to look it up later, and she wasn’t quite sure it made any sense. Surely Mummy had known whether or not she’d been baptised? Everybody Julia knew had been.

Then Janet wandered through the library and glanced at what Julia was reading. “Church law? That doesn’t sound like fun.” Janet wrinkled her nose as if she were about to sneeze from the sheer dustiness of the topic.

Julia closed the book, keeping a finger in it to hold her place. “It’s just something I was wondering about.” Janet looked intrigued, and Julia realized that she really did want to talk about the whole thing with somebody. “It’s about Mummy.”

Janet pulled out the chair next to Julia’s, sat, and put her elbows on the table in that way she had that always reminded Julia that Janet was nothing at all like Gwendolen. Janet leaned toward Julia and said in a soft, very worried voice, “Is she all right?”

Julia hadn’t meant to worry Janet who still sometimes desperately wanted her own parents. Losing Aunt Millie and Uncle Christopher would devastate her. “Nothing like that.” Julia closed her eyes for a second. “It’s all… It’s all fog and moonlight, and it’s about the past not about now or even the future.”

Janet relaxed a little and was sitting at the table properly when Julia opened her eyes.

“It’s a lot of nothing,” Julia said, “and it’ll sound silly.”

Except that it wasn’t. Now that Julia looked at it squarely, she was more bothered by the ‘estimated age’ than by the ‘provisional baptism.’ Her mother not knowing her age said a lot more about her past than her not knowing if she’d been baptised. Julia had noticed the implications before but hadn’t wanted to admit they were there.

Janet being there meant not facing the questions alone.

Julia took a deep breath. “It kind of started with me wondering about Mummy’s maiden name. It was DeWitt, of course; I should have guessed that. But she doesn’t ever talk about when she was little, and I don’t know her parents’ names or where she was born. I think… Her birthday is the day she was baptised when she was-- It says ‘provisional baptism’ and ‘estimated age.’ They guessed she was seventeen.”

Janet looked like she’d just tried to choke down thick slice of bread without chewing it. “I don’t know what provisional baptism means.” She sounded like she, also, didn’t want to look at the bits of what was missing.

“It means--” Julia’d read the explanation over and over so that she didn’t need to look. “It’s when they don’t know whether or not someone was baptised before and don’t want to offend God by doing it over but want to be sure it’s done at least once.”

“Why would God care?” Janet looked genuinely puzzled by that. “I was never baptised.”

Julia blinked at her in complete disbelief. “Everybody gets baptised! Unless they’re not Christian…” She looked at Janet uncertainly. “If you weren’t, why go to church with us? Instead of doing something else, I mean.”

Janet hesitated. “Going to church is part of living here. I didn’t-- You’re talking like it’s _real_.”

That cracked more of Julia’s mental foundations than any of the mysteries about her mother had. Those were merely that she didn’t know what some bits of what she was standing on were made of. This was more like putting her foot through the floor and having it stick there. Julia hadn’t thought to question Christianity. She raised her chin a little. “Daddy’s met gods. He talks about it sometimes.”

Julia and Roger were only supposed to hear the funny stories, but both of them had learned to eavesdrop pretty early on, so they’d heard other kinds of stories, too. Some gods were much more terrible than the vicar’s God who just wanted people to be nice to each other.

There’d been another vicar, Julia remembered now, about seven years ago, for about three Sundays, who had had a different sort of God. Daddy had frowned at the sermons, and Mr Whitman had suddenly had to travel for his health. Julia hadn’t thought about it as important at the time, but…

There was usually a connection between Daddy frowning and things happening.

“Nobody in-- Back where I come from, nobody’s met a god,” Janet said. “My… My parents always said different ways for different places. We didn’t go to church except for weddings.” She frowned. “For funerals, too, but not me, not usually. I was too young.”

Julia thought that Janet missed her home considerably more than she admitted. Julia had the impression that her parents thought so, too, because they were very careful around anything that might hint at her not belonging in their world or at her belonging only there. Mummy read whole books about Janet’s world’s customs and food and history, and Daddy got photographs of Janet’s parents to put among the family records next to the photographs of Cat’s parents. 

Except for their clothing, Julia couldn’t really tell the two sets of parents apart, but Janet and Cat agreed that they were quite obviously not the same people. They’d both admit seeing a likeness, but each considered their own mother prettier and their own father handsomer.

Cat was really the only person who took Janet’s statements about not missing home at face value. He didn’t understand that Janet had decided that she could have a different kind of happiness here than with her own parents because she’d realized that other people wouldn’t have a chance to be happy at all if she went back. Janet was kinder than she liked to let on.

Julia hoped that Romilla appreciated that sacrifice.

“I thought,” Janet went on, “that it was mostly because we live more in the country here. We-- my parents-- live in a city. People in villages are always going to church. At least, they do in stories.”

Julia hadn’t known that Janet’s family lived in a city. She hadn’t thought to ask. She hoped that the not asking was more politeness for Janet’s loss than simply not having noticed that there were empty spaces in what Julia knew, but Julia thought that she had to be more honest about it than that. “I didn’t know.” She put apology into that.

“Why would you?” Janet stared at the surface of the table. “Everyone’s careful not to ask. Except Cat. I’m not sure it’s kinder, either way. I’m here, but I don’t want to erase the parts of me that came from there.”

Julia wasn’t prepared to address any of that, so she changed the subject back to her mother. “The registry listed her age as ‘estimated,’ and that’s the date we celebrate her birthday. I thought-- The registry says she was a DeWitt, but surely that means they’d know when she was born?” 

Julia hadn’t meant to make it a real question, but Janet ignored the plaintiveness and addressed the words that way anyway. “If it weren’t for knowing Gwendolen’s birthday and if I hadn’t known, none of us would have any idea what my birthday was.” She sighed and looked very sad. “I’m pretty sure that Romilla didn’t know when her birthday was. Nobody’d thought it was important for her to know, that she was important enough.”

Julia’s heart clenched at the thought that her mother might have lived a life like Romilla’s. She could tell that Janet was contemplating that horror, too. It wasn’t nearly as exciting and romantic when it was real. “We can’t ask her.” Julia’s statement was flat, unyielding. “We-- _I_ \-- need to know, but we can’t ask her.”

“Don’t ask Uncle Christopher, either,” Janet said softly. “He’d probably tell you, but he’d look at you like he does, like you need to know but don’t really know what you’re asking for. Then he’d tell her you asked-- because she ought to know, too-- and she’d-- She’d look at you differently for a while, maybe always.”

Julia nodded because Janet was entirely right.

“Who’s been at the Castle that long?” Janet asked. “Or maybe not _at_ the Castle, just here often enough to know.”

Julia was pretty sure that Mr DeWitt knew whatever it was, but the idea of asking him was more horrifying than the idea of not knowing. “Mr Roberts or Uncle Conrad, maybe, or Miss Rosalie. Probably Uncle Conrad.”

Mr Roberts had large pieces of his past that had ‘no trespassing’ signs blocking them off. Some of those might be hiding all of the things Julia needed to know. Maybe his pain was also Julia’s mother’s pain.

Miss Rosalie wouldn’t understand why Julia needed to know. Miss Rosalie might give Julia a pretty story that covered everything satisfyingly but was a complete fabrication. She believed that certain things could be left behind, that they should be because they hurt people in the present. Miss Rosalie wasn’t entirely wrong.

Just sufficiently wrong.

Uncle Conrad was the hardest to talk to, logistically speaking, because he didn’t live in their universe, but he never lied when the children had questions. Once, when he’d answered questions Mummy’d have preferred he not-- Julia wasn’t sure, but she thought those particular questions had been about Father Christmas-- he’d said, “Concealing the truth does more harm, most of the time, because it means they can’t trust you.”

Mummy had looked startled and then nodded as if Uncle Conrad had a valid point that she’d have preferred to ignore. Mummy thought that lying was a social necessity that meant doing something not very nice rather than it being a betrayal. 

Julia could see both sides. Sometimes, they all had to pretend that that night’s pudding hadn’t had too much nutmeg or lemon. Sometimes, one cousin had been replaced by a lookalike from another universe. Sometimes, one person wanted to make another do something terrible. The why part mattered almost as much as the what.

Uncle Conrad thought that lying to children-- most of the time-- was a betrayal. If he thought he had to lie to Julia about this, then it really was a thing that had to be forgotten. Julia wasn’t sure she could, even then, but she’d know she ought to.

****

Julia did not want to talk to Daddy about Mummy’s past, but Uncle Conrad had said none of it was his story, not really, but that a little of it was, in fact, Daddy’s. Uncle Conrad had said it wasn’t a secret secret, just something that Mummy thought shouldn’t be important.

So Julia knocked on Daddy’s study door one Saturday morning when she knew he was having a bit of time to be Christopher Chant instead of Chrestomanci. 

Cat wasn’t ready to do much as the next Chrestomanci, but he could screen calls and make sure that Daddy had time for tea and biscuits. Today, Cat had promised her that he’d only let extremely important summons pull Daddy out of the conversation. That knowledge mostly meant that, if Daddy looked vague and claimed urgent business elsewhere with the conversation only half done, Julia would be pretty sure that he was lying. Cat’s ideas of urgency tended toward the potentially apocalyptic rather than the merely diplomatic, and potentially apocalyptic things really didn’t come up very often.

“Come in,” Daddy called through the door. “If you’re knotting your handkerchief already,” he added before she’d done more than touch the knob, “I expect it’s serious.”

Julia opened the door and took a deep breath. As always, Daddy’s study smelled of paper and dust and flowers. The paper and dust part never changed, but the flower scent was often different. This time, she thought it was apple blossoms with an undertone of cut apples and pie. She liked apples and pie, so it was possible he’d changed that just for her, as a welcome.

She was pretty sure that Daddy’s tone meant that he thought it was serious by her standards but not by his. She supposed it probably wasn’t. She went and sat on one of the chairs near the fireplace. It was warm enough that the fire wasn’t lit, but the chairs over there had magically reinforced padding that made them more comfortable. Their red plush was worn thin in spots so that they looked shabbier than the chairs nearer to the door or nearer to her father’s desk. 

Strangers tended to sit in the prettier chairs and then wonder why they were so uncomfortable. Mummy said it put them on their best behavior because they thought that stiffer, harder chairs meant that Daddy was more important. Julia hadn’t understood that part for years, but now she knew that it was a tiny indication to most people that the Chrestomanci was more powerful than they were. It was the same reason why Daddy sometimes made people wait even when he wasn’t busy.

She was a little surprised to note that her feet reached the floor easily now. She remembered years and years of having her legs dangle. She supposed she’d grown taller. “It’s probably silly,” Julia told her father. “At least, if it was _dangerous_ , you’d have told me and Roger a long time ago.”

Daddy’s expression suddenly became more wary, and he took his finger out of the book he’d been reading, letting the cover fall closed. “I’m not good at-- Your mother said she talked to you about, er, growing up.”

“Not _that_.” Julia certainly wasn’t going to talk to her father about puberty and sex. It would be mortifying for both of them. “There are plenty of people I can ask about that.” It wasn’t even a lie. “Books, too.” She twisted her handkerchief then forced herself to stuff it between her skirt and the padded arm of the chair. “I just… It’s silly.” She knew her questions weren’t silly, but it was a hard thing to ask because, once she had, there’d be no going back.

She took a deep breath. “I’ve been wondering for years now, and it’s better to know, but-- There are a lot of things Mummy doesn’t talk about at all, not ever. Things about her past.”

Now he looked sad. Not heartbreak or guilty sad, not the way he looked about mermaids, just melancholy. “I told her one or the other of you would ask.” His gaze drifted upward until he simply wasn’t looking at Julia. “She just never wanted you two to have the troubles she had about being too different from everyone else. She wanted you to fit here. There was also…” He hesitated and looked at Julia measuringly. “Yes. You’re old enough now that it shouldn’t matter. We didn’t want Asheth to notice you when you were still a girl.” He fiddled with a cufflink.

Julia took several seconds to place the name ‘Asheth.’ “Series Ten?” She was almost certain she’d gotten that right.

“Yes,” he answered. “And, no, you can’t visit casually.” He studied her expression for a moment. “I won’t say which city or which world, not until you tell me why it matters, so Cat can’t take you there.”

“I was worried…” Julia hesitated. “I thought she might come from Eleven.” She let that sit there for almost a minute because she was pretty sure her father would understand the load of fear about her mother’s past that went with that guess. “It would have explained a lot.”

He laughed in a way that was about denial as much as amusement. “I should have thought that through. The timing would have made sense.” He shook his head. “Series Ten. It wasn’t an unpleasant childhood, just isolated. She doesn’t remember her family, just being chosen by Asheth as a… a conduit. Asheth is--” He shook his head again.

Julia tried to remember what she’d been taught about Series Ten.

“Your mother didn’t think to mourn that while she was in the Temple,” Daddy said gently. “Not until years after. If she’d been homesick or angry or anything like that, she’d have rebelled in ways that Asheth might have found inconvenient, and Asheth has been doing this for longer than there’s been a Chrestomanci.”

There’d been a Chrestomanci before the Norman Conquest, and that was only a measure of how far back the written records about the office went. It hadn’t been a new thing then.

Julia nodded.

“I’ve met Asheth a few times,” Daddy said in a completely neutral voice. “Her personally, not just the children who serve as Living Goddess. She’s not human, not even remotely. She doesn’t conceive of most people as having inherent value, and she doesn’t remember your mother particularly, but she does-- Being chosen as Living Asheth can run in families, and Asheth can be possessive and vindictive.” He gave Julia a sad smile that seemed to recognize that she was old enough to understand these things. “Your mother says there’s nothing back there worth the risk of visiting or even remembering. Sometimes… I think that she has gaps in her recollections of the Temple because many parts of it were Asheth rather than her. Living Asheths tend not to have much personality or interest in things that Asheth isn’t concerned with.”

Julia nodded again because she understood the implied part of that-- Mummy had been different.

“They also…” Daddy hesitated. “The Goddess demands a soul when a Living Asheth becomes too old to serve. It doesn’t have to be human, but Asheth wouldn’t… Asheth would not object. There’s power in blood and death, especially dedicated blood and death.” He frowned in a way that expressed profound disapproval.

Julia had seen kings and queens (well, Gwendolen, at least) pale in the face of that expression, but he wasn’t directing it at her, so she decided to ignore it. “I don’t want to meet Asheth, Daddy. I just… I feel like I-- _we_ \--” She wanted to include Roger, too, even though he hadn’t seemed very interested. “--ought to know. Is the language different? What is the food like? The music? The clothes? The--” She groped for the right question, but ‘Will you take me there?’ was a thing she’d have to edge up to asking even though it was what everything aimed toward. “The etiquette?” She remembered Janet’s words and paraphrased them. “I belong here, but I don’t want to erase the parts of me that came from there. They’re real, too.”

Her father seemed to relax a little. “Those are manageable questions. I’m glad you didn’t ask your mother, but they’re--” He shrugged. “They can be classroom questions. I can teach all four of you or Michael can. Cat’s going to have to know how to get by on other worlds. I learned by wandering and by getting killed a time or three, but he’ll be safer learning in other ways. Without going there. Without--” He absently rubbed his chest then seemed to realize what he was doing. He flattened that hand on his thigh. “I died on your mother’s world once, right after I met her for the first time. If I hadn’t promised her books, I wouldn’t have gone back. I was… Well, I don’t think I was older than Cat was when he came to the Castle.”

So Asheth wasn’t the only reasons her parents didn’t want Julia to visit Mummy’s home world. There were people there who’d murder a child. Julia managed not to narrow her eyes as she considered that. She was nearly certain that Daddy hadn’t meant her to guess how he’d died, that him rubbing his chest had been unintentional-- Cat said dying hurt. That it was viscerally memorable-- but Daddy was good at deceiving people into thinking they were clever, so maybe he had done it deliberately.

“I will want to go eventually,” she told him. “I’ll tour every world in the series if I have to.” She wouldn’t. She didn’t want to spend decades on it, and the odds were good that every world in the series had multiple temples to Asheth. She frowned at him and tried to judge the right angle of attack. “I’m unlikely to forget or to give up.”

“It’s not likely to be anything like what you imagine.” He didn’t sound so much as if he was trying to persuade her as he did as if he was warning her.

“I haven’t any expectations at all,” she said. “It’ll be an adventure. I can gawk like a tourist and buy tacky souvenirs.”

For a moment, he looked vaguely appalled. Then he seemed to realize that she was winding him up. “Julia--”

She smiled at him. “I don’t want to worry Mummy, and I understand that she chose, but it’s still part of me.”

He sighed. “Your mother will try to talk you out of it.” His eyes met hers, and she heard the unspoken question-- _Will upsetting her be worth it?_ “But I suppose I can take you. When you’re older.”

She swung one leg so that her shoe scuffed audibly on the carpet, and she saw him get that point, too. _When you’re older_ couldn’t buy him nearly as much time as it once had. “I wouldn’t want to visit if it were Eleven, you know. You could have lied.”

“I wouldn’t, not about this.”

She believed him. She stood, crossed the room to him, and kissed his cheek. “It doesn’t need to be this morning. Just eventually.”


End file.
